Jayme Koszyn discusses sex and breaking boxes in Cloud Nine

JAYME KOSZYN

An interview with the director of MIT Dramashop's Cloud Nine.

By AARON McPHERSON

CLOUD NINE IS DIRECTED by
Jayme Koszyn, who works locally
in Boston and has worked in
Washington, DC, and in New
York City. She is currently employed as a
Literary Associate at the Huntington Theater
Company, responsible for the research
and written materials provided to artists
working at the theater.

Who is Caryl Churchill [the author of
Cloud Nine]?

She's considered one of the foremost
women playwrights in Britain. One of the
most interesting things is the way she
works, and the way in which Cloud Nine
was created. She helped found, or is one
of the leaders of, a theater company called
the Joint Stock Company. The way that
the company works is that they will come
up with an idea that they find fascinating,
and then the actors will go out into the
community and work in the world of that
idea that they're creating. Churchill takes
all the actors' material and for a period of
time she structures the play, shapes it, and
then writes the play. For Cloud Nine, the
Joint Stock Company, Churchill, and the
director got together and they decided to
explore the ideas - especially personal
and subjective ideas -that the actors had
about sexuality, gender, and the relationship
between sexual oppression and colonial
oppression.

Can you describe the characters a little?
It seems it's a very character oriented play.

It's a very political play. And it's a very
personal play. The play has very needy
yearning, hurting characters. Every single
one of them is in bad shape. The reason
they're in bad shape is that there is the
tension between a kind of box that everyone
operates in, a way that everyone is
supposed to behave. You're the "good
daughter," you're the "doting wife,"
you're the "slave," you're the "master,"
you're "straight," and everyone tries to
operate within these very strict parameters.
What Churchill has done is put these
people in boxes in the strongest societal
box of all, Victorian England, and the
struggle and central conflict of the play is
between the true selves of these people,
trying to break through- the box. That
struggle is very violent in some respects.

You have the son, Edward, who wants
to be a girl, and is actually played by a
girl, constantly fighting between trying to
be a good little master's son and wanting
to make love to Uncle Harry. Betty, who is
supposed to be a kind of canine creature
for her husband and do everything he says
and do everything her mother says, has
unbelievably potent sexual passions.
[There are only two people], Maud, the
mother of them all - who represents, I
suppose, Queen Victoria - and Clive, the
white, upperclass British male, whose true
selves are their boxes. So, in a sense,
they're the most frightening characters of
all.

The way this translates into Act Two
[where the setting changes to contemporary
England] is that although society
seems to be less box-like, the characters
have traded one box for another. There is
a gay relationship in Act Two, which there
could never have been in Act One. Yet
their relationship is so characterized by the
principles of dominance and submission
- just like a stereotypical heterosexual relationship,
where one is playing the wife
and one is playing the husband - that
they operate within Chinese boxes, hopping
from one to another.

How much do you think these "boxes"
are the creation of other people, their expectations,
and how much do you think it's an attempt to achieve any self identity?

I think that people are mainly put into
boxes by other box people. Clive actually
says that boys aren't supposed to have
feelings. But I think what happens is (this
is what is so scary about Act Two) that
even when you no longer have a master-slave
construct, even when you have Victoria
and Line, who are completely different
classes - not only are they women,
but they're lovers, they traverse class lines
and straight-homosexual lines - the boxes
become internalized.

The way the box activities were initiated is you are put into the box by your parents.
The theme of parents and children in
this play is extremely significant. Not only
the relationship between parents and children,
but how children then duplicate their
parents' boxing them.... It's especially a
big theme in Act Two, because it's all
about parents and children, and even metaphoric parents and children. ... Once
you get out of the box, life is very scary.
What happens in Act One is that when
people are behaving the way they're supposed
to behave, everything is very funny
and interesting and quirky and campy. But
then as soon as people start revealing their
true selves, things get darker. Facing the
true self is not easy.

I think that the notion of the "cloud" -
the reason that the play has the title that it
does - is that, at least in Victorian England,
the structures of the box are very
clear. It's a very bleak vision, even though
the play is a comedy, and is very funny. In
Act Two there's a sense of limbo, of this
cloudness - for example, no one knows
how to characterize the role of women.
Women have been trained now to have careers,
and that they're not fulfilled and
that they have to feel guilty if they stay at
home and raise children. There's a sense of
limbo, like "wasn't it easier when you just
followed your man where he moved, and
you always did a certain thing and acted a
certain way."

How has it been, working at MIT?
What do you think is special about students,
as opposed to professional actors?

Directorially, it's a completely different
experience. The focus has to be different,
because when I'm directing professional
actors, who are [constantly working] on
their craft, I depend a lot on the actors
making their choices, and then. working
with their ideas. With students, it's more
of a collaboration. I give more guidance
than I would with a professional actor.
What I love about working with students
is that they have so much energy. They
have so much enthusiasm. I think those
two words are the key to a successful rehearsal
atmosphere.

(Aaron McPherson `89 served as IAP
campus arts coordinator for the MIT
Office of the Arts, which arranged this
interview.)